Invasion of Privacy (18 page)

He helped her pack her car. At first, he could hardly believe Terry was gone. He could breathe again. The house settled and calmed, the baby slept through the night, and he and the sitter cleaned the place thoroughly, exorcising the last of her frantic, disturbing presence.

Thank God she had gone. He realized how sick he felt, how afraid he was of her, how lonely and isolated he had become.

He began looking for another place for him and Lianna.

A week later, he met Nina over at Fallen Leaf Lake.

Terry returned on a weekend in August. Kurt waited for her in the cabin. She brought her bags in and threw them on the floor, opening her arms for a welcome home, which he made an effort to deliver. Then he sat her down on the couch.

"While you were gone, I moved out, Terry."

"What?"

"I rented an apartment in Incline Village."

"Wait a goddamned minute. My leaving you was supposed to be temporary, and I had time to think. I decided to come back. We can have it all, Kurt. Work, baby. Everything you and I both want."

"I don’t see it that way." Let her think she had left him. He didn’t care how much she lied to herself anymore.

She shook her head, frowning. "This is a very bad thing you’ve done."

"I’ve got a room set up for the baby over there. I mean, she’s here today. She’s sleeping at the moment. I thought you’d want to see her. But she’ll be better off with me. I know you must agree with that."

"Who is she?"

"Who?"

"Who’s the bitch you ran off with?"

When he didn’t answer, she continued. "You’re not the type to make it on your own. You’ve gone from one woman to another without Terry to keep you warm at night, but sweetie, you forgot one thing. Nobody breaks a promise to Terry. You’re not going anywhere."

He stood up. "I established residence in Nevada while you were gone. I’m getting a divorce. Now, you can take this well, and continue to see your child, or you can blow it, and get hurt."

"Kurt, why are you doing this?"

"We’ve said everything. I’m going to get the baby. You can have a little visit, and tell her good-bye for now. We’ll work out some kind of deal so you can see her, when you know better what you’ll be doing."

After a pause Terry said, "I would like to see Lianna."

"You’re taking this well," he said. "I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it." He had played the scene a dozen times in his mind, and it had always been much more dramatic. He walked with her toward the hall, feeling reluctant to turn Lianna over to Terry, but unable to think of what he could do about it.

"Let me get her, Kurt. I want to see her face when I wake her up."

He agreed, holding back the instinct to say no. She was Lianna’s mother.

He sat on the couch in the living room waiting for them to return. He waited longer than he wanted to, trying to be fair, giving her the time she needed to be alone with her child, to make her peace with what might be a long good-bye.

"Terry!" he called finally, but there was no answer.

He peered down the hallway, giving her another few seconds to come out. She hadn’t left. She couldn’t get past him to the door. A minute, then two minutes ticked by. He knocked on the bedroom door. "Everything okay in there?"

"Well, I don’t know," Terry’s voice said, sounding annoyed. "She just ..."

Why couldn’t he hear his daughter? "Let me in, Terry. Unlock the door."

"I don’t understand it," Terry said, coming out at last to stand in the doorway. She moved her shoulders in a funny half shrug. "She just won’t get up."

He flew into the room. Lianna lay in her crib, facedown, a light knit blanket floating over her tiny body. He watched her for a moment. He touched her back. Still. Still as his heart.

The paramedics came, and then the coroner. He fell apart. Between his sobs he told them that Terry had killed their daughter. They listened to his story, and Terry’s story. Before long, he knew she had won. He had witnessed nothing. They had no evidence. They patted his shoulder, and comforted his grieving wife, who sat so pale and quiet on the couch that they gave her a shot to prevent a shock reaction. Nobody knew the cause of sudden infant death syndrome. Nobody could have done anything to prevent it.

Kurt Scott died that day, along with his daughter.

That pillow in the corner... He knew she had done it.

The next day, at his new apartment, while he sat in the living room engulfed by rage and sorrow, someone had knocked at the door until he could ignore it no longer. He opened the door. Vivid in a bright red dress, her face twisted with possessiveness and hate, Terry pushed her way in.

"Now, let’s talk about this bitch you’re seeing," she said.

He had turned his back on her and walked out. He ran away from Tahoe. He ran away from Nina, who was in danger because of him.

And Terry began looking for him, as he had known she would.

17

NINA SAT ON A ROCK UNDER A SHADY SPRUCE TREE, looking out over Emerald Bay, waiting for the horror of what Kurt had just told her to diminish so she could think.

Farther down the rocks, a young Japanese man took a picture of his friend. Her black hair blown back by the breeze, she smiled into the sun, leaning with one hand on the warm granite. Behind her, Lake Tahoe, miles of cold, deep water, glittered in the afternoon sun. They saw only the beauty of it, not the awful, unknown depths.

She knew she had to make a choice. Believe him, or not believe him. If she believed him, the responsibilities that would follow were so heavy, she wasn’t sure she could bear the weight.

If she believed Kurt, he had suffered a blow from which few people could recover. He had tried to escape, but like some harpy Terry had sought him, her revengeful hunger still unsatiated. Over the years, he had made himself a sort of life in exile, which Terry had again shattered with her death. Terry had murdered their child, and tormented him almost to insanity. He ran, not just to protect himself, but also to protect Nina. And she had been ignorant of his sacrifice. She had despised him.

While Nina had continued her own life all these years, changed by knowing him and the suddenness of losing him, he had been out there living too. She had only a few years on this earth, and her time and Kurt’s time ran parallel. How could she ever have thought she wouldn’t see him again!

She thought of his fingers—graceful, long fingers— and his large hands, which spread so far across the keys. He played the fugues of Bach, those complex point and counterpoint melodies in which one series of notes fled from another... fugue, from the Latin word that meant "to flee."...

If she believed him, she would have to try to help him. At least she was clear about that.

She slipped her trembling hand inside her blouse, touched the smooth scar. She wasn’t sure she had the strength.

If she believed him, she would have to fight Riesner before she could even begin to help Kurt, and he would make sure she got hurt. Matt had reacted badly to the thought. He might even ask her to move. Paul ... she might lose Paul. Her legal practice would suffer. She would look foolish. Woman defends love-child’s father! What would it do to Bobby, who had reached such a vulnerable place in his development?

The tourists climbed back up the rocks, moved on. She was alone for the moment, facing the great body of water. The lake looked like a cauldron of blue energy, its emanations blurring the air above it, the mountains its protecting walls.

Could she even see the case clearly? If Kurt didn’t kill Terry, then someone else had, someone who might be connected with the film.... Funny, she’d never thought about the film this way, but Terry had essentially said in the film that a mass murderer haunted Tahoe. The notion had seemed half-baked-until now.

There might be danger. She wasn’t an Amazon, dagger in her belt, striding through the forest in search of a man-eating tiger. She was a mother.

What about her resolution to stay away from criminal cases?

And... what if she believed him, and lost the case? How could she live with that?

Could he be lying, his story a clever and self-serving appeal to her sympathy? What if she won, and he had lied? What about Bobby? Would he be safe? Was he safe now only because Kurt didn’t know about him, and was imprisoned? If Kurt learned about his son, what would happen then?

If he was lying, and had killed Terry, and Nina found out later... she would be destroyed emotionally. He still had the power to do that to her.

The reasons against taking over the defense were so strong—how could anything outweigh them?

The reasons to help him were so small, lost in the din of warnings in her mind. Maybe—just maybe—he was innocent and she could save Bobby’s father. Then, one day, they could meet, Bobby and his father, Bobby complete at last, Kurt given an amazing gift that would make up for so much....

Really, the reasons for fighting for Kurt came down to a boy saying, please, Mom, you have to help him ...small reasons. A tiny chance for the three of them to be ... happy? Could they go back twelve years and start over, even if Kurt was free? Did she really dare to think that thought?

Strange how that thought of the three of them together spread like cool water across her mind, filled the gaps of doubt, moistened and soothed the dust of her dread. It tugged gently in the corners where her strengths lurked, the intelligence, the courage, the obstinate will to find the truth. It drew these strengths out, cleared the muddiness from her mind.

This was the challenge, affecting her life so intimately, that she had been preparing for all these years, without even knowing it. She couldn’t walk away from this.

Over an hour had gone by. She was stiff. Her foot had gone to sleep. She moved it gingerly, enduring the prickles, eyes still fastened on the lake.

She had come clear. She would fight.

First, Jeffrey Riesner.

Several of Riesner’s clients had switched to her, probably because she was cheaper, hopefully because she was better. Riesner charged two hundred dollars an hour plus costs, very stiff for the working community here in the mountains. Nina often agreed to a flat fee for her services, which made the clients happy, as they could call her with questions without having to worry about the clock ticking. Of course, after office and other expenses, she sometimes found herself working for a few bucks an hour.

Nevertheless, Riesner had lost several clients to her and that was only adding fuel to his antagonism.

And now she had decided to give Riesner a doozy to complain about. She couldn’t help Kurt unless she took control of his defense.

Wasn’t it unethical to blatantly steal a client? And who’d ever heard of a lawyer taking a case in which she was likely to be a witness?

This lawyer needed a lawyer, one who specialized in that jumble of ambiguous rules and regulations known as legal ethics.

Back at the office, she talked to a potential new client and turned him down. She had remembered that there was a hotline to the California State Bar, where a lawyer could call anonymously and receive advice on legal ethics.

Ordinarily, Nina stayed away from the California State Bar. Its official function was to support the legal community in California. But it seemed to her, as to many other lawyers, that ninety percent of its activities involved punishing lawyers, and the other ten percent involved reporting the public reprovals, suspensions, disciplines, and disbarments in the State Bar newspaper. Each month she read the details of the downfalls of dozens of her colleagues, hoping she wouldn’t recognize any of the names. The State Bar was like the tax man: capricious, confiscatory, and unavoidable.

Yet there was this one service from which she could receive the help of anonymous, free advice from the people who ought to know. And she faithfully paid the State Bar four hundred seventy-five dollars a year in dues. Now was a good time to see if her professional organization would put its mouth where its money was.

Closing the door, she looked up the number in San Francisco. The phone rang a long time, and then she was put on hold. Finally, a cordial male voice said, "Hi, State Bar."

"I’d like to be transferred to your professional responsibility hotline." It ought to be called the deep-shit hotline, the place lawyers called when they were sued by disgruntled clients, arrested for drunken driving, or under investigation for dipping into the client trust fund.

"Are you an attorney with us?"

"Yes."

"Certainly, counselor." She deeply distrusted the cheer in the operator’s voice.

A new voice came on, this one exactly what she had expected: impatient, world-weary, suspicious. A woman.

"Hotline."

"I’d, uh, like to ask a couple of questions regarding professional ethics. If that’s possible."

"You’ll have to leave your name and number, and someone will call you back."

Leave her name and number? What about anonymity? But such was the authority in the telephone voice, that Nina meekly stated her identity, then said, "When, uh, may I expect a return call?"

"Today," the voice said, and hung up. She hung up, too, wishing she had never called.

She stood at her lakeside window, looking out at Mount Tallac, some granite showing through the melting snow at its lower elevations. A few miles farther around the lake, in the northwesterly direction she was looking, was Emerald Bay, out of sight around a curve, and behind it, Fallen Leaf Lake. She hadn’t been out to the summer rental cabin where she had been staying when she met Kurt since she moved to Tahoe.

Sandy came in with a pile of papers. "For you to proof and get back to me by four-thirty, so I can make copies and send them out."

Sandy rescheduled her late-afternoon appointment in Carson City. Nina imagined troubled lawyers all across California, waiting all afternoon for their special phone call, missing court appearances, house closings, settlement meetings. She thought about the State Bar calling everyone back long distance. She thought about her bar dues.

But when Sandy’s buzz came at four forty-five she had a moment of panic. She had voluntarily brought her otherwise obscure self to the attention of the regulator of 150,000 California lawyers, the mysterious powerful presence that meted out justice and punishment to those who feared nothing else, That Which Disbars. "Thank you for returning my call," she said in a humble tone.

"My pleasure, Ms. Reilly. How can I help you?" said a confident young female voice, serene and unsettling. Why was it so placid? What calamitous news did it regularly report in that soothing tone?

"I have a couple of minor little, er, hypothetical questions for you," Nina said.

"Certainly."

"Okay, let’s assume I want to represent somebody in a criminal case, but it’s possible I may be a witness in the case. I don’t really think I should be called, I have no direct knowledge, but the prosecutor might think I know something relating to motive or, uh, the res gestae. You know, the stuff that happened the day before, the defendant’s movements and so forth. Am I making myself clear? You could maybe look up for me—"

"Lawyer as witness," the inhumanly confident voice said. "Ms. Reilly, I would refer you to Rule 5-210 of the Rules of Professional Conduct. Generally, a lawyer may not represent a client if it is likely that the lawyer would be called as a witness in the same matter."

"Oh." Shot down already...

"However, the third exception to the Rule may be of interest to you, Ms. Reilly. A lawyer may represent a client and also serve as a witness, so long as the client has given informed prior written consent."

"Oh!"

"Your second question?"

"Uh, yes, this is all hypothetical, you understand, of course—"

"Of course, Ms. Reilly. Your second question?" Nina felt the sense of a tremendous time pressure, as if the voice was so superbly valuable, not a moment nor a syllable could be wasted. Perhaps her clients felt a little of that sometimes, dealing with her.

"Well, let’s say I want to represent this same client, but he’s already represented by counsel. The client wants to switch. I know there’s some kind of rule about soliciting the other guy’s client—"

"Indeed. Rule 5-2100. You are prohibited from communicating with a person already represented by counsel upon the subject of representation."

Nina waited. She was learning. Bad news, then good news.

"However, you might wish to consult the exception at paragraph C, subparagraph 2. Communications initiated by a represented party seeking advice regarding representation from another independent attorney are not prohibited."

"So long as the client initiates the discussion about changing lawyers," Nina said. "I understand."

"You should be aware that the State Bar does not give legal advice, it merely provides information as to the content of the Rules referred to," the voice said. "Would you like me to cite some cases on the points mentioned?"

"No, thank you," Nina said. "You’ve been most helpful."

"The State Bar is here to serve you," said the State Bar. Nina guiltily enjoyed for a moment the feeling of power that all those dues multiplied by all those lawyers brought. With so much money, the lawyers could all move to their own litigious little island and leave the rest of the world alone.

She made a note or two beside the doodle she had drawn of a nervous little man stretching out his hands toward a fat, complacent, dangerous gorilla. Her stomach was growling. She was wondering if the State Bar had taped the phone call. She was in some computer data file now. Her questions had been duly noted and could be recalled.

The flip side of the coin was that she could prove she’d called the State Bar before she did what she was going to do. She had covered her rear, and the State Bar’s attempt to cover its own rear there at the end of the call, with its disclaimer that it was providing legal information only, was patently absurd. Or so she would argue if it ever came up.

Of such paranoid reflections are the thoughts of lawyers made.